Without Redemption
by Vagrant BG
Summary: Cloud Strife is haunted by dead eyes and Tifa is in love with a man with a dead soul.
1. Love for a Ghost

I Don't Love You

All he could feel was heat and her scent filled his head. Her skin against him was so smooth and the feeling of being inside her was finally too much. With a suppressed grunt, Cloud Strife released his seed inside her. He felt his member leave her, her hair causing a sensation he didn't want but that wasn't unwelcome.

He lay next to her, his eyes still closed. He hadn't been thinking of her. His thoughts lingered on a dead woman. Only the image of her let him feel true release. Of course he felt terrible for using his best friend this way, but she wanted him and he wanted something. He wanted flesh.

Cloud looked over at the woman he'd just fucked. Her ample breasts heaved and her face was covered with an arousing blush. Cloud regretted that he couldn't love this woman. She was great looking, nobody could deny that, and when people saw him walking with her in public he knew they were envious. He knew they were staring at her figure, wishing they could fuck her like he did.

But only one girl could give him that feeling of warmth in his heard. She was gone.

Tifa was here.


	2. Used

Chains of Desperation

She felt him inside her, his length burning between her legs. She felt the heat, the rhythm of the loveless act. Looking into Cloud Strife's face, into his closed eyes, she knew he wasn't thinking of her. His mind was in a dead place, somewhere it shouldn't be. But how could she judge him?

Tifa knew she was as guilty as he was. She had been the one to take Cloud into her bed knowing full well that Aerith's death had not even begun to sink into Cloud's heart or mind. But she needed him, needed her hero to save her and take care of her like he promised. She loved him, knowing he didn't even see her.

As Cloud's final grunt sounded, she knew it was over. She hadn't even been thinking of making love, or even thinking of her partner. She was thinking about herself and how much she hated herself for her lack of self respect. Tifa Lockhart knew she could do better than a man with no soul left in him. She was well aware of the stares she attracted in public. Many attractive and well off men often tried to win her heart, or more specifically, her body. But her heart was chained to a man that didn't feel it beating against him.

As Cloud climbed off her, his length exiting her as if it were never there, she knew he still wasn't thinking of her. She wondered if he ever did. During the love making, yes, she knew that it was Aerith's skin he felt, Aerith's smaller breasts, and Aerith's eyes looked at Cloud from somewhere far away. But in public, was he still trapped in Aerith's ocean of love, or was he truly thinking of her, his _best friend._

In the end, Tifa really did not want to know the answer. She didn't care.

As long as Cloud was with her, she could breath.


	3. Without Hope

Cats in the Cradle

_Three Years Later_

Alone, in the dark corner with his coat covering his face and the drink coursing through his blood was Cloud Strife, not the man he once was. His once golden hair was now mattered with dirt and it no longer held its spike, it hung lifeless over his illumine eyes that were the only part of his body that still looked alive. His face was drawn, crow's feet clung to his eyes and his lips cracked. His appearance often startled passers by, the shadow with glowing eyes that peered into your soul. Even his own team had abandoned him, his friends. At first they looked after him, bailed him out of the trouble that the drink would land him in, but one by one they lost faith in his sanity. Soon it was only Tifa that stayed with him, lending her house to him, lending even her most precious possession to him, her body, her virginity, even as she knew in her heart that she was nowhere to be seen in his eyes. All he saw was his lost one, the one that died.

But Tifa stayed with him, hoping that one day he would wake up from his eternal nightmare. He would wake up and see that Tifa was with him all the time. She was the one who looked after him, who needed him. But it never happened. Cloud began to drink more and more, to see things that weren't there. He talked to her, entire one sided conversations, he touched her when nothing was there, and he called out her name when he released himself inside Tifa. Finally, Tifa herself lost faith in the man she tried to love.

After that, Cloud Strife lived as if he were unable to die; drinking more than one man should be able to. In the bar he got into drunken fights with anyone would look at him, breaking bones with lethal force even in his drunken state. Often waking up in streets he couldn't name with the sun far too bright in his sensitive eyes, he'd stumble back to the bar and spend the entire day in the shady corner ignoring the looks he got from everyone. Nobody else mattered; the only eyes that truly saw him were the emeralds that followed him everywhere he went, looking on him with pity, looking on him without hope for his redemption.

By Daze Riot


End file.
